Independent, are we?

Image from Outlook, 10 April 2018

That article is worth reading; click here to read.

I don’t want to be a spoilsport on a great occasion like the Independence of my country. Wish you a Happy Independence Day.

Are we independent, however?

I belong to the old generation most among whom believe with Mahatma Gandhi that independence is not just a political matter. Independence is much more than liberation from colonial rule. Have we really come a great way from those days when the British treated us as just goods and chattel? I doubt.

Of course, quite many things have improved. The country’s statisticians tell me so. For example, India was food deficient when the country became independent in 1947. Today we have excess of food. Yet today thousands of Indians go hungry! Tons of food just go waste in our warehouses.

As long as there is even one citizen who goes hungry in a country, that country cannot be considered independent. It is enslaved by poverty or injustice or inequity or corruption. India suffers from all of these and a lot more enslaving problems.

Worse, all these problems have been subsumed under a glowing veneer of nationalism today to which has also been added the superficial fervour of pietism. Suddenly a ridiculously large majority of Indians have become nationalist and religious.

The truth is that it is not so much about nationalism or religion as about hatred of certain sections of people. This new breed of nationalists and religionists are more eager to correct the errors in the religious practices of other people, people who practise other religions (especially one religion which need not be named at all, for all Indians know it). This new breed of nationalists and religionists are very much interested in the welfare of the wives of men belonging to that religion. They are very eager to bring prosperity to regions where people from that religion are the majority. They are very concerned about their food habits. And so on.

No, India is not at all independent. India has been pushed into a quagmire of communalism. Add all the superstition that is peddled in the name of an ancient venerated culture, and the last chance of salvation is stolen. Pseudo-science reigns supreme today. Genuine science is scoffed at even in the premier institutions of learning such as IITs by our eminent leaders and the learned scientists sit quietly listening to all the balderdash.

Silence of the intellectuals is a serious nemesis that is haunting India today. The intellectuals don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want income tax raids. They don’t obviously like to be shot at on the way back home. Or just be lynched by hooligans who wear patriots’ garbs.

Hooliganism masquerades as heroism in India today. That too with official sanction. If you look at some of our prominent leaders, listen to their loquacious speeches, read between the lines of what they utter, you will be struck dumb by the sheer lack of imagination, let alone vision. Did a country of 125 crore people elect these leaders? You wonder. You feel ashamed of yourself for belonging there among them.

What a pity! Independence Day!

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